Launders, N., Hayes, J.F., Price, G., & Osborn, D.P.J. (2022). Clustering of physical health multimorbidity in people with severe mental illness: An accumulated prevalence analysis of United Kingdom primary care data. PLoS Med. 19.(4): e1003976. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003976
People with severe mental illness (SMI) have higher rates of a range of physical health conditions, yet little is known regarding the clustering of physical health conditions in this population. The authors of this paper (uncorrected proof) aimed to investigate the prevalence and clustering of chronic physical health conditions in people with SMI, compared to people without SMI.
Author summary
Why was this study done?
- People with severe mental illness (SMI) such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other psychoses have more physical illnesses, such as diabetes or heart disease, than people without SMI.
- They are also more likely to have risk factors for poor health, such as smoking, obesity. or substance misuse.
- While we know that these patients have poorer physical health, we do not know whether the patterns of disease are the same as the general population.
What did the researchers do and find?
- We used electronic medical records to investigate how common 24 physical illnesses are in people with SMI and used a mathematical model to compare them to people who did not have SMI.
- We then investigated how common it is to have multiple physical illnesses (multimorbidity) and which diseases are commonly found together in people with and without SMI.
- We found that people with SMI had more physical health conditions than people without SMI, particularly in younger age groups.
- We also found that physical conditions cluster similarly in people with and without SMI.
What do these findings mean?
- We see similar clusters of physical health conditions in people with and without SMI, suggesting that focusing on diseases common in the general population will also reduce the burden of disease in those with SMI.
- In the general population, we think of multimorbidity occurring in older age, but the findings of our study suggest that there is a need to address younger-age multimorbidity and reduction of risk factors for poor physical health in people with SMI.
Clustering of physical health multimorbidity in people with severe mental illness: An accumulated prevalence analysis of United Kingdom primary care data [paper]
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